Blog: Free Again

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My NOVEL Storm House is FREE to download again this weekend, over on Amazon, so if you've not got a copy yet, now might be a good time!

I've read a metric TONNE of blogs about Self-Publishing, and they all say that giving your books away for FREE like this is the best way to get people to PAY for them in the future. The general idea is that readers get HOOKED by one book, so that when you release a new one then a) they're eager to PAY to read it abd also b) they tell OTHER people about it too. This all seems fairly sensible to me, and I AM hard at work on 'Storm House 2', but to be honest I mostly like doing it because it's FUN. My favourite activity at the moment is going and looking at the Kindle Sales Reports page every 30 seconds and clicking refresh to see if anyone else has 'bought' it! There is a GRAPH and everything!

Last time I did a free promotion I was mostly relying on the beautiful readers of the newsletter to get it all going, which they did wonderfully. As far as I can tell, the KEY is to get enough people to download your book so that it gets into the various categories of Top 100 free books on Amazon, and then OTHER people see it and decide to take a punt, which pumps it up even further and so on. Last time it was all VERY exciting as Storm House got to the TOP of various charts and even into the OVERALL Top 100 - of course that tailed off MIGHTILY once the free window was over, but it was fun while it lasted!

This time around I was very aware that many many nice people had helped me out, and didn't want to pester them again (not just yet anyway - there'll be a new book to hassle everyone about next year!) so I had a look at the MANY different service who'll include your book on their DAILY lists of free books via email or App. I got myself logged onto a load of them and even PAID for a couple, reasoning that this was the PROMOTIONAL BUDGET that I would usually spend on POSTAGE if I were releasing an ALBUM or something.

I wasn't sure if this would work or not - the world of ARTS is FULL of organisations out to take the money of VAIN people wanting to be LAUDED (and also people like me, OBVS) - but so far it seems to be going PRETTY well. Last night it got back to the NUMBER ONE spot on all the categories it's eligible for (which I think tells you more about how few copies you need to 'sell' than how popular Storm House is!) and this morning it's back in the Top 100 Free Books! HOORAH!

Hopefully this'll all lead to some more REVIEWS in the short term and some INTEREST for the next book in the longer term, but right now I'm just enjoying watching the GRAPHS move! As ever, thanks LOADS to anyone who's downloaded it and ESPECIALLY to those who've bought a paperback version (they are LOVELY), and if you've not done either yet... well, it's free until Sunday night, so get in quick!

posted 10/11/2017 by MJ Hibbett

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